I would love to have enough B-17's to reenact scenes from 12 O'clock High!
Speaking of B-17's, any word on a release date? I am hoping to fly missions before Thanksgiving.
I would love to have enough B-17's to reenact scenes from 12 O'clock High!
Speaking of B-17's, any word on a release date? I am hoping to fly missions before Thanksgiving.
Bombers work well when flew straight down the table and back, so running them on near autopilot is pretty easy. If you have a single player running only the bomber, you can easily have them do evasive turns and such as they make their way down the table.
Last I heard was the container was due to arrive at the warehouse the latter part of this week. How long it take for them to uncrate them process them into the system and ship them out to stores... I don't know. I do think bombing missions on Thanksgiving might be kind of optimistic though.
Is there a section for solitaire rules here on the forum? I'd love to have a crack at these upcoming bombers solitaire ...
edit: (WHOOPS yep. easy to find)
Last edited by Xen; 11-05-2014 at 21:45.
We have good experiences with bomber crew management in WGF & WGS.
I remember a Caproni Ca.4 & a He.111 mission at our Prague Summer Con last year with the "multiple crew hit option".
Of course at a Con with many AI driven bombers it does not make sense to "waste" time with crew management. You need the 2 - 3 hours to introduce the newbies and to keep the game in a good flow.
Changing crew positions is interesting and I'm curious if we have - with the upcoming heavies - posibilties to change positions again like the side gunner in the He.111.
I love the bombers for the crew management.
...and: Nothing more satisfying for an attacking fighter, when the bullets rip through the bomber's fuselage and you knock down some gunners. Remember: there aren't that much pilot hits in the damage decks.
Voilŕ le soleil d'Austerlitz!
B-17 won't have many position changes, most of its crew were full-time gunners at assigned stations.
EXCEPTIONS:
Radioman/Dorsal Gunner - Radio room (rear spine; probably worked radios and gun from same seat--late Forts deleted this gun)
Bombardier/Cheek & Chin Gunner - was either at his map table near one cheek gun, or manning the Norden bombsight and chin turret (co-located, but can only use one at a time re the latter two)
Navigator/Cheek Gunner - was either at his map table on the other side near his gun
Engineer/Top Turret Gunner - either running the engines or manning his turret - negligible distance between stations but only attention for one task at a time
http://www.b17bomber.de/eng/details/crew.php
So basically you have four gunners who never leave their posts (left waist, right waist, tail, ball--though a good gunner as noted will also learn other aircraft positions so if he has to take over another role he can), four "managed" crew with divided responsibilities and two full-time pilots. Not a lot of Crew Management until you take casualties and need to allocate crew resources, though you will always need at least one pilot-trained crewmember. If you lose both pilots, I'd suggest a "save draw" to decide whether one of your gunners or navigators has either flight training or innate natural skill, or it's time to Hit The Silk.
The Kiss system works for me, just like the Oberst said earlier.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Herr Oberst's system would work well at a Con if you have a staff member running the bombers; he/she would have no stake in the game, and could "pull" casualties impartially.
The biggest slowdown with a bomber formation is the sheer number of damage draws inflicted.
Karl
It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he knows. -- Epictetus
I think the crew management is doable with the bombers doing a straight run and one player managing the crew. You just need room to set up all the bomber cockpits.
Thomas
I concur absolutely Tom.
I ran my first unaided (ie. no Skafloc or Strangely Brown experten) WW2 game at the World Champs this year.
To make things easier for my first solo outing all aircraft bases had a sticky dot with the aircraft number corresponding to a chart I had drawn up. All the pilots had to do was call out their hits. "Two A's and a C on plane red 7", for instance. I drew the chits and wrote down the scores alongside the aircraft, simply passing on any special damage info to the pilot of the receiving end. This helped to cut playing time down by 50% and had the knock on effect of quicker changeover between games because there were no chits to collect in from all over the place.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
The cockpits/management boards !
Neil's Zep control board is a magnetic board with a steel sheet for the base and chit on sticky magnetic backings akin to fridge magnets. You could use the same system for bomber control cockpits, and then stand them almost vertical, thus saving a lot of table space, and also rendering them shielded from your opponents.
Rob.
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
Andrea
Thank you for sharing the cards. I remember you asking for research for them. The abandoning of the boxed sets has always upset me. It ignores the day one customers of the whole WOW series. Someone who does not play with miniatures! If i want to test a scenario, i use the cards!
Rich
I am - as the most experienced player in my group - leaning toward flying a bomber doing all the crew management and provide all the other players with fun flying the little brothers and bandits. It can be very very entertaining sometimes. Otherwise noone would fly a giant But with the upcoming real giants, flying them will mean mostly bookkeeping Well, let;s wait and see... Memphis Belle preordered...
"We do not stop playing when we get old, but we get old when we stop playing."
Thank you DB for sum up the positions.
I'm curious if we get some special rules for the four engined bombers in crew management.
For example: To operate the Norden bombsight, the Bombardier/Cheek & Chin Gunner can't man the guns. According to the actual rules he needs to skip at last two firing phase to switch and be operational.
Additional for WGF and WGS: We have no rules for taking over positions of knocked out crew positions, for example sending the bombardier to the rear gun position as an replacement. Once knocked out the position is inoperabel.
Like said before; I'm curious for the crew members, positions and rules for the upcoming WGS big ones.
Voilŕ le soleil d'Austerlitz!
Its been mentioned before, COULD Rain of Destruction or other card releases be crowdfunded?The abandoning of the boxed sets has always upset me. It ignores the day one customers of the whole WOW series.
Thank one of your countrymen for an excellent description, all I did was paraphrase.
I'd say it should be one phase on the B/N compartment, FE and radioman... but once there the bombardier cannot take his attention off the Norden until bomb release. And with the chin controls clustered around the Norden, the nav can't pinch-hit. Until you declare IP and move the bombardier onto the bombsight, the nose crew should be able to take up cheek guns on demand--it should also be noted that once you hit Initial Point there's no more maneuvering, it's Straight & Level until release--ALL aircraft flight control is routed to autopilot via the bombsight and whatever fine-tuning inputs the bombardier gives it. It's not like a Stuka or Dauntless or even a strike Beaufighter where you can just T-LAR it...For example: To operate the Norden bombsight, the Bombardier/Cheek & Chin Gunner can't man the guns. According to the actual rules he needs to skip at last two firing phase to switch and be operational.
You wouldn't send the bombardier, you'd have one of the waist gunners do it if I understand right (me, unless we were seeing a number of attacks from below I'd bring the ball-turret guy up*). Call it one phase each to move from FWD to Waist or Waist to Tail, then a phase of setup.Additional for WGF and WGS: We have no rules for taking over positions of knocked out crew positions, for example sending the bombardier to the rear gun position as an replacement. Once knocked out the position is inoperabel.
*Give him a better chance of survival in case we ditch or belly-land--that belly turret is non-retractable, and if you belly in the whole weight of the plane goes onto it so if the poor guy can't get out before that what's left of him is gonna be about the consistency of ketchup.
I don't know how much of this is paralleled by a Lanc, never having been inside one or seen crew-station diagrams to know how many crew, who's where and what kind of space they have to work with.
Just some thoughts--I don't expect Ares to have considered this level of detail, but it might be useful in developing an Advanced Bomber Rules supplement PDF.
They want to keep it as a miniatures game, but the miniature gamers want miniatures AND expansion cards. I can see there is a pure business to be made, and Ares does not see that. There is a market thirst to be quenched, but they say No. Sorry, very sorry guys, to say but it resembles me our old socialist government from the seventies: People wanted ham and butter, but they knew peoples' needs better and were very happy producing locomotives and vinegar.
"We do not stop playing when we get old, but we get old when we stop playing."
I can't understand it, too.
There is a need for additional plane cards for the existing miniatures, too.
Why not produce plane cards and movement decks for different Bf.109 versions (armament, camouflage, etc.) or other planes.
Another example would be other cards for the B25 Mitchel bombers, for ground attack versions or versions with a rear gunner.
Voilŕ le soleil d'Austerlitz!
Well as a business person, I can see why they do it this way. I've dropped some of my AA products over the years because they did not sell well enough to overcome the extra work/expense of having them. If one of those products also directly competed with one of my best selling products, I'd drop it even faster, or not even offer it.
The other side of the coin is that there is not always the time and resources to make everything one might think would be a good product. There are are lots of things I'd like to make and sell, but I just don't have the time or resources to do them. Even companies run in to this problem... and Ares is still a very small company.
With the crowdfunding I was thinking more from outside of Ares. I didn't want to question Ares direction, they've been really good to us as we all know! I wonder if we could get their blessing for a campaign though, as the cards were always inspiration for repaints for me. I bought the cards, never made the repaints... yet.. lol. If I could get more WW2 boosters of minis even only of ones Ares has released, I would be stoked. So more cards for the Yaks, B25's, Heinkels OH and p40's!! australian P40's
Seriously, even just of Ares/nexus planes, I would be stoked. I would not want to ask them for permission to make cards of planes they have not released or announced.
You could do a crowdfunding campaign for each deck, each deck only to have 1 or 2 planes, so go hard on lots of designs/paint schemes.
I wonder what the minimum run would have to be for something like that.
It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he knows. -- Epictetus
was key to my post.get their blessing for a campaign
Sorry I mis-read your intent.
I would greatly welcome a printing of this, either through traditional publishing or Ares-sponsored crowdfunding.
Karl'
It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he knows. -- Epictetus
It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he knows. -- Epictetus
There is a BBUU version of the Necromancer that cancels mod locks.
Mike
"Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss" Douglas Adams
"Wings of Glory won't skin your elbows and knees while practicing." OldGuy59
I wish I had an appropriate meme for the moment too, but alas all of mine are based around flame throwers...
Sorry, I checked the rulebook draft I have. It was only 95% complete, climb rates were not included yet.
@OldGuy59: Love the card, Mike. Flying Dutchman of WoG
Was there anything in the Draft Rulebook, which was new and might be of use to us such as torpedo bombing rules and nightfighter rules, please Andrea?
No, sorry. I'd say that anything interesting has already been used in our Rules Pack and in the bombers of the Special Packs.
Thank you for replying, Andrea.
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